


Realizations

by GoldenTruth813



Series: Realizations [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Angst, EWE, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 23:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4896901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenTruth813/pseuds/GoldenTruth813





	Realizations

Draco lets out a soft sigh, unconsciously rubbing the dark mark on his forearm under the table as he listens to Harry laugh at his own story. Quite suddenly though Harry stops, as if reading Dracos thoughts he wraps his hands around his pint and fixes Draco with a look so intense he doesn’t even blink.

“Ok?” He asks, his eyes trained on Draco. He sounds a lot more sober than Draco thinks is possible.

“Of course I am, Potter.” Draco lies easily.

He lies a lot, at least to Harry, because sitting in the pub, laughing with Harry, their legs pressed together under the table as Harry leans into him to finish his particularly rousing story, has done nothing to settle him. Quite the opposite. In fact it’s all Draco can do to pay attention to Harry’s story, to focus on his actual words and not the way his lips curl when he laughs or the way his eyes shine when he’s excited.

If Draco had thought things were complicated when he and Harry were enemies it was nothing compared to how complicated things got when they became friends.

He’d spent his most formative years trying to get Harry’s attention. Nothing in his life had burned more than being scorned and rejected by Harry Potter. He can still remember deciding that a bit of payback was only fair. Except year after year his attempts to thwart the other boy had failed so miserably it had almost been embarrassing. Not that it was something he would’ve ever admitted to anyone, but all the same it was something he’d known. He’d learned pretty early on that no matter what he did he would never beat Harry Potter.

In fact he can still remember the first time he realized that he would never beat anyone, that he would never be better than anyone…not Potter, not his father, not Voldemort. And so he’d set out to prove them all wrong, to prove to them that he’d been chosen for a reason. To prove to himself that he was more that his own shortcomings.

Draco knows there were reasons he made the choices he did, knows he could make all the excuses in the world for his behavior, and sometimes he does. Sometimes he can even pretend those reasons are enough. Not often, but sometimes. Because the person he is now, so many years after the war, is so different than the one he’d been at Hogwarts. And the things he knows now, make the things he thought he’d known then seem like they’d happened to someone else.

He remembers being eleven, when he’d thought everything in the world would be better if he was Harry’s friend.

He remembers being sixteen and thinking everything in the world would be better if there was no Harry.

He remembers being seventeen and realizing that there could be no life without Harry.

He remembers turning nineteen and realizing he had to try again. That had taken more courage than he had known he’d possessed.

He remembers turning twenty and finding out that Harry’s forgiveness truly did extend to everyone; realizing that even if he could never forgive himself that Harry already had and that maybe for awhile that could be good enough.

He remembers turning twenty one and the exact moment he had realized he was in love with Harry.

And as he sits there in the pub pretending to listen to Harry’s ridiculous story for the third time that night, pretending that he is ok, pretending that he is not desperately in love with Harry, he wonders how long it will be before Harry makes a realization of his own.


End file.
